Tuesday, September 24, 2013

2013 Hatch Brown Trophy

The Michigan Sailing Team traveled to MIT over the weekend
for the Hatch Brown Trophy hosted by MIT.This was the second weekend in a row that the team had drove 12 hours or
more to the northeast, but the intense competition seen at the NEISA and MAISA intersectionals have been definitely worth the long drive.

Charles River

Saturday featured 5-20 knot winds out of the southwest, with
70 degree temperatures and sunny skies.The conditions were shifty and puffy as always on the Charles River
which caused all crews to be on top of their tactical game and boat handling in
order to succeed.The regatta consisted
of three divisions per team, and since MIT has a fleet of FJ’s and Fireflies (a
European two-person dinghy) two of the divisions were able to race at a time on a
modified trapezoid course.

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Alex Ramos and Karinne Smolenyak

The team took a race or two to get up to speed on the
competitive NEISA starting line, but by the second set of the day all three
divisions were consistently recording finishes in the top half of the fleet. In
A division we had Alex Ramos ’15 and Karinne Smolenyak ’14, B division- Ryan
Seago ’14 and Elizabeth Wallace ’14, C division Tom Etheridge ‘16 and Scott
Ismail ’14 with Chris Cyr '16 crewing for a few races in A div. and skippering in C
div.

Sunday featured slightly different conditions with a 5-15
knot westerly wind with partial sunshine and 70 degrees temperatures. This allowed
the race officials to run 7 more races per division by the 3 pm deadline. After 17 races, Michigan
finished in 15th place of 18 which was respectable considering that
it was the first regatta of the year for most of the team.